Vol 18, No 3 (2021)

This paper offers the edition of SI 4485 and SI 4958, two manuscripts of the Old Uighur section of the Serindia Collection of the IOM written in alliterating verses. Their contents are praises on Maitreya, the future Buddha. The author tries to show why praises on Maitreya like the two presented here were written. He argues that it was to advocate the preservation of Buddhism through proving the superiority of the Maitreya cult over other religions in the current viral times of the Yuan.

The Chinese collection of the IOM RAS keeps the Manchu-Chinese diploma from the former Museum of Paleography, which was founded by Nikolai P. Likhachev in 1925. The Museum was closed in 1930, and manuscripts in Oriental languages were sent to the nowadays IOM RAS. Among these manuscripts was the Manchu-Chinese diploma dated 1682. It bestowed the civil official Yatu the 4th rank title zhongxian dafu, and his wife from the Tunggo clan a corresponding title. The article publishes the diploma and its Russian translation from Chinese and Manchu.

This article surveys the Indian (Sanskrit and Prakrit) loanwords used in the Christian literature in Sogdian, including some which have not been noticed previously. In particular, it discusses a possible borrowing of the Buddhist Sanskrit technical term citta-saṃtāna-, used in a Christian Sogdian text in the sense “train of thought”

It has been recognized so far that sound change was not used in order to avoid using a taboo character. Nevertheless, we find examples that suggest that there was indeed a habit of changing sounds to avoid using taboo characters in speech. Such sound changes can be seen not only in the case of state taboo, i.e., avoidance of the given names of emperors, but also in the case of secular taboo, e.g., sound changes of the vocabularies for genitals practiced in the Buddhist society. Interesting enough, these sound changes were not a case of temporary substitution but were used as one of the stable pronunciations of the characters.

The Tangut language was spoken during the Xixia (Tangut) dynasty (A.D. 1038-1227) in the northwestern part of China.The first emperor (A.D. 1036) established the Tangut script for the language. Although the Tangut language and  its script are now extinct, the many documents written in the Tangut script enable us to reconstruct its phonology and grammar. Tangut belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language group (Tangut-Qiang). Its grammar possesses unique features that are not found in either Old Tibetan or Old Burman. One of such features is a “directional prefix”. Six or seven morphemes function as prefixes. Previous works have discussed the change in the function of the prefix from “directional” to “aspect (perfective)”. Some minor Tibeto-Burman languages have morphemes that are similar syllables or functions to Tangut. In this article, we present the outline of the prefixes and a description of the prefix ²da:- with sample sentences and discuss some remarks

The topic of the article is early medieval Indian Buddhist views on the problem of monks’ selection for the study in monastery universities. Basing on the analysis of Vasubandhu’s treatise “The Encyclopedia of Abhidharma” and the commentary on it (Abhidharmakośa, Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya), the author demonstrates that the criteria of the selection elaborated by Kaśmīr Vaibhāṣikas included only moral qualities of competitors. Only monks inspired with determination to achieve the soteriological aim of the Buddha’s Teaching to “eradicate the root of suffering” could be regarded as appropriate for the study. The object of special attention was virtuous behavior of a competitor and strict observance of monastic vows. Those who were diligent, abstinent from sin, content with minimal material goods (clothes, food, bed, and seat), and see happiness in monastic ascetics and religious practices regarded as worthy competitor.

Before the formal Chinese compilation of the “Twenty-four filial pieties” appeared in the Yuan era, there were lots of stories concerning family moral code spreading around the Central Kingdom and along the Gansu Corridor. Most of them entered Xixia through the channels of literary record or oral narration. Some of them were translated into Tangut more than once and became the most popular materials used in moral education for youth and in birthday congratulation for aged people. Sometimes the Tangut versions are quite different from the corresponding Chinese originals in their storylines or even in topics. Such fact shows that Tanguts tried their best to make Chinese culture integrate into their own and lots of their Tangut versions were recomposed through oral literature than historical records. Tanguts did not have the real concept of “Twenty-four filial pieties”, but their versions concerning filial piety show the transitory stage shortly before the Yuan era.

This paper is based on our preparation of the seminar ‘Nouvelle approche des sources chinoises (principalement le Tongdian) sur l’Asie centrale à l’ouest des Pamirs’ at the Collège de France since autumn 2020. We assume that the ‘golden poluo’ (ultimately from Sanskrit pātra- ?) mentioned in the entry on Cao (Ishtīkhan) in the Suishu was a huge container of sharbat or another beverage or soup, serving the poor people and worshippers around the temple of Takhsīch. The big cauldron at Khodja Akhmed Yasawi (Kazakhstan) may be a continuation of this Zoroastrian practice, of which evidence in the Anthologie de Zādspram is detectable. As to the gold poluo presented by the Tsenpo of Tubo to the Tang court in 658 and the silver one by the king of Qiuci in 675, they were both likely wine drinking vessels carefully chosen for celebrating the restoration of the Tang power in the Tarim Basin after the turbulence in the middle 650s and in the late 660s, respectively.

The present research is aimed to identify the unattributed miscellanea of Shi‛a traditions (hadithes) in the collection of the Arabic manuscripts of the IOM RAS. The analysis of Shi‛a tradition’s ithnads and its comparison with the data from other Shi‛a authors (ash-Shaykh as-Saduk, an-Najashi, at-Tihrani, Muhammad at-Tusi) gives a foundation to affirm that it is the miscellanea Sahifat ar-Rida (“Scroll of ar-Rida”). It is one of authoritative and trustworthy sources of Shi‛a religious doctrine, law, cult, moral, ethics. Copies of this miscellanea are kept in the collections of Arabic manuscripts in various countries. In this context the identification of the Saint-Petersburg miscellanea of Shi‛a traditions (hadithes) may be useful for a further preparation of academic critical publication of Sahifat ar-Rida.

In 1930 E.D. Polivanov published in co-authorship grammars of Chinese and Japanese. He proposed some original approaches in the both grammars but his approaches were different for these languages. In the Japanese grammar he emphasized the peculiar role of syllables and interpreted all the not independent grammar units as affixes; however he considered the same units as in the “usual languages”: phonemes, morphemes, words, clauses. His approach to Chinese was quite different: Polivanov considered syllables and incorporations the basic units of Chinese instead of phonemes, words and clauses, denied the principal difference of morphology and syntax in his language.

This article deals with the album of Chinese drawings produced for export in the late 18th — early 19th cc. Originating from Guangzhou, 84 color pictures represent craftsmen, petty traders and street actors. Sixteen of them concur by subject and composition with the engravings published by G.H. Mason who named Pu Qwa as an artist of the originals. Similar drawings can be found in the album of Östasiatiska Museet in Stockholm; other ones, close to ours in style, have been included into the album of Capitan Lisianskii. The “Parisian album” was compiled and bound in Paris; it was on sale in the Dondey-Dupré bookshop, and in 1828 Heinrich Julius Klaproth inscribed it with his hand certifying the fact that the drawings had been produced by a Chinese painter (what was probably doubted). It is still unclear how the album reached the Imperial Public library (National library of Russia of today) in Saint-Petersburg. However, it had happened before 1852 when the academician Bernhard Dorn published his catalogue in which the album was described under the number 798.